Stuart Lea's quote of around 62000 is interesting, as one of the sales people told me (when I called up in March) there had 50,000 (approx) back orders, so after the initial rush there haven't been *that* many subsequent orders. I think that as commented elsewhere, that people are waiting until they are freely available before they order ? Also I'm presuming this is Farnell UK's back orders, not including any international distributors.

Looking at the timeframe for this 'missing' batch as quoted by Jenny and touching on the start of this thread....is a month enough to make 8,000 from kit form ? Or am I being overly cynical ? If they were ready made, surely Farnell could get them over here faster than mid May ?

The thing I don't understand is that I would take Liz's quote above as referring to the batches that Farnell are making, not the remaining 8,000 from the mythical first batch of 10K. Even if it was a couple of weeks, surely the 8,000 should have been made by now ! I wonder if I will get a firm answer back in the RasPi forum ?

Let's ask Element 14 and RS to identify the serial numbers of the boards that they each are selling. They obviously know this information since it is important when customers return boards to them, otherwise there would be potential for confusion and/or cheating.

The ranges of serial numbers will be useful information for Rpi's wiki and other information pages, even Wikipedia, once the whole story of production unfolds and millions of Rpi enter education. At the same time, it will tell us how many units are being manufactured by each party, and later, by each factory.

It's important to realize that although serial numbers are company information, they cannot be hidden from us since everyone who receives a board could post their serial number and hence it will become public knowledge anyway. Element 14 and RS might realize this, and save us the effort by volunteering the data.

We’re excited to report that our next shipment of 4,000 Raspberry Pi’s has now left our manufacturers in Asia and will be on their way to customers next week! We have a further 12,000 due to arrive with us by the third week of May and regular volume shipments thereafter .

By early next week all 110,000 customers who have ordered with element14, wherever they are in the world, will receive a confirmed delivery date ( which, as previously communicated, will be no later than the end of June for those who ordered before April 18th) .

Also, over the next 5 days, we will invite the 70,000 hopeful customers who have already registered their interest in the Raspberry Pi to place their orders, with delivery expected in July/August, dependent on the place of that order in the queue.

Elsewhere I saw that RS have 250,000 but not sure if thats orders or registrations of interest.

Great support and communication by Farnell, but then they are a reputable firm and it is great to see they take their reputation seriously.

I do still wonder about the 8,000 that the Foundation said were being made and shipped over. From Jenny's announcement, this seems very firmly a Farnell led build, so I'm still thinking those 8,000 were only ever in kit form when the Foundation 'had' them.

Well done to Farnell for pulling this out of a deep hole.

I'm hopefully getting mine the week after next and I'm fully expecting to see a silkscreen CE certification, which wouldn't have been possible if these had already been made, or is that incorrect ?

I know we have discussed it here before, but I'm becoming more and more of the opinion that the Foundation only had 2,000 built, these were the ones that had problems and the rest were never made, at least at that time. I got one comment that they were still having the jacks replaced, but in that time frame, I could have desoldered that many, and I'm only just learning which end of the soldering iron is the correct one to hold !

In theory, if this lot turn up without a silkscreen CE on them then I guess I am wrong, but if they do have a silkscreen on, then I think the mystery of the 8,000 might have been solved, they were never made under the auspices of the Foundation, but Farnell picked them up as part of the sales agreement.

We can only wait and see I guess. I'll post photos of mine when I get it.

Jenny Peters has issued the clearest statement yet on the mystery of the "missing 8000".

The pcb's for the 8000 had been made prior to the compliance delay, but

apparently the pcb's hadn't been populated from what I gather. So no

resoldering of ethernet jacks, or shipments back to the factory, for the 8000.

JennyPeters on May 3, 2012 at 5:13 pm on the RPI.org forum wrote:

"Really no mystery here. The initial batch commissioned was for 10,000. the first 2,000 made by Raspberry Pi, the remaining 8000 by RS and element14 (4,000 of each). I can confirm that element14′s 4000 have been received and will be shipping out by end of business tonight so anyone with an order date of w/c 7th may is coming from that batch. The 8000 were delayed whilel we all waited to see if the Compliance testing necessitated hardware changes – it didnt so as soon as the compliance paperwork was finalised manufacturing continued. The pcb’s had already been received so the compliance markings will be the same in this next shipment as for the first 2000. From here on in we’re on our own ! Our next shipment will be for 12,000 and then we have another, even larger shipment at month end and 3 more volume shipments before the end of June……110,000 due to us before the end of June and all committed to people like you who’re keen to get their hands on them! Hope this clears up the mystery!"

I'm sure I have seen several times (but I could be wrong, i'm getting older and the memory is failing) the Foundation talking about the 10,000 boards being built, on way etc etc, so this was a little wide of the mark at best ?

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